Tim Hursley
Thanks to sturdy glass walls, the great room barely seems to tou…
Three weeks after this house in the Ozark Mountains was seriously damaged in an electrical fire, architect Marlon Blackwell began designing its renovation. His work was to redo the burned and smoke-ravaged parts of the building, including the kitchen, living room, and children’s bedrooms, without completely erasing what was left of the old structure.
The original house had been constructed on a tartan grid delineated by L-shaped concrete columns, which withstood the fire. So Blackwell kept the grid intact and added several second-story light monitors—shed-roofed, weathering-steel-clad volumes designed to create more living space and bring in natural light. And he extended a double-height, glassed-in great room out through the side of the existing house. In the kids’ bedrooms, cozy sleeping lofts hang from the ceiling by steel cables. “They really respected that grid, but did something completely different and unexpected,” said a judge.
In keeping with the owner’s love of natural materials, Blackwell used generous amounts of wood on the interiors. Walnut makes up the great room floors, while cherry lies underfoot in the bedrooms and covers most of the renovation’s walls and ceilings. The added portions’ steel exteriors strengthen the project’s relationship with the surrounding landscape. “It’s a dynamic surface that changes with the weather,” Blackwell says. “It begins to have a patina and character, an integrity.”
Project Credits
Entrant/Architect: Marlon Blackwell Architect, Fayetteville, Ark.
Builder: JW Enterprises, Fayetteville
Interior designer: Meredith Boswell, Fayetteville, and Oscar Glottman, Miami
Landscape architect: Landscape Studio, Hattiesburg, Miss.
Living space: 4,430 square feet
Site: Withheld
Construction cost: Withheld
Photographer: Tim Hursley
Resources: Exterior siding/roofing: Corten Steel; Flooring: Dal Tile; Paints: Salvage Paint Co.
